The present invention relates to an apparatus for conveying planar objects, in particular printed products accrued in an overlapping formation.
An apparatus of this type is known, for example, from patent specifications CH 617 408 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,201,377. Placed downstream of a feed conveyor is an evacuating conveyor running at an angle thereto. The outlet of the feed conveyor is disposed on one side of the evacuating conveyor and, at a distance from the outlet of the feed conveyor, above the evacuating conveyor, there is assigned to the latter a circumferential deflection member, which forms with the evacuating conveyor a transport gap that tapers in the feed direction of the feed conveyor and acts in transport terms equidirectionally with (i.e., in a direction parallel to) the evacuation direction of the evacuating conveyor. The apparatus is suitable, in particular, for conveying printed products accrued in an overlapping stream, since the overlapping stream is maintained, while only the orientation of the individual printed products within the overlapping stream changes.
In addition, from EP 0 718 226 A, a feed deflection apparatus for at least partially folded newspapers and magazines is known, in which the feed direction of the newspapers is deflected through 90°. The apparatus has a pair of stop cylinders and a pair of acceleration cylinders, which pairs lie substantially in one plane but at an angle of 90° to each other. They are provided with sector-shaped lugs in order to keep the newspaper or magazine between them pressed when the lugs of both cylinders of the cylinder pairs are on a line between the center axes. By means of the stop cylinders, the respective newspaper or magazine is arrested or stopped by controlled slowing of the cylinders such that no slippage of the newspapers between the pair of stop cylinders occurs. The pair of acceleration cylinders grasps the side margin, viewed in the feed direction, of the newspaper or magazine at the moment at which the newspaper or magazine is stopped by means of the pair of stop cylinders. This feed deflection apparatus is suitable solely for handling newspapers or magazines which accrue at a distance apart one behind the other. The object of the present invention is to refine the apparatus of the generic type such that the accrued objects are deflected in a timed manner.